June 4, 2008

Fairfax County School Board members said they are likely to abandon a staff report that showed racial and ethnic gaps in some measures of student behavior, including in the demonstration of "sound moral character and ethical judgment."

The board had delayed an April vote to approve the report after concerns were raised that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes.

Board member Phillip A. Niedzielski-Eichner (Providence) said yesterday that he plans to propose at a June 19 meeting that a vote on the report be postponed indefinitely. Several board members have indicated their support, he said.

Board member Martina A. Hone (At Large) said that the original report is "fatally flawed" and that it doesn't make sense "to work on fixing it." She said she is pleased with the way the board is rethinking it. "I think we have come out a stronger school board," she said.

The school system's report was an early attempt to measure progress on a host of goals the board considers "essential" for success in the workplace. It identified disparities among groups of students in several skills, including the ability to contribute effectively in a group, resolve conflicts and make healthy choices, and in the demonstration of moral character and ethical judgment.

55 comments:

beowulf
said...

ha, this is the best part of the article...After hearing from nearly 100 people at three meetings, the committee concluded that too often minority parents feel "a sense of alienation" in their children's public schools. Many could not name their school board representatives or articulate their functions, the report said.

Elected officials aren't known for keeping their light hidden under a bushel. I doubt its the school board members' fault that parents don't know who they are.

You know the best thing you could do for their children is put them in a boarding school. There's a DC charter school that has the right idea. http://www.seedfoundation.com/seed_program/index.aspx

My cousin's kid just "graduated" to middle school from an elementary school in Fairfax County. When I saw him recently he had a shirt with all the names of his graduating class. They live in what seems on the surface to be a relatively white, upscale area, but I don't exaggerate when I say that less than half the names were (in Archie Bunker style) "regular American" names.

Most people have no idea what this country's headed for. It ain't the same as when those irregular Americans were Irish, Italians, and Jews.

I loathe this compulsion to make white and black outcomes the same in every way. If people keep obsessing about it, they are really going to regret it down the road.

Any sensible non-white should realize that whites will only take so much. They should be asking, what should we do to keep whites nice? Accusation has been working in the short-term, but blowback is likely.

I wonder if honesty and openness are two of the criteria used in judging "sound moral character and judgment." And isn't the Fairfax County School Board judging such constitute a classic pot-kettle situation?

I lived in Northern VA for over 35 years. Fairfax County has been widely lionized as having some of the best public schools in the nation. How this all came about was the growth in the DC area of young, generally highly educated and/or highly skilled people who moved there to work for the greatly expanding federal government in the 60's and on down.

These folks couldn't afford to live in the more upscale areas of DC and didn't want to live in other areas of DC because of crime, bad schools, quality of housing, etc. FC was largely rural, in the outer areas, land was fairly cheap, so housing developments sprouted like mushrooms. These new residents were largely families - or soon would be - and demanded good schools. Since they were willing and able to pay taxes for them and took a large personal interest in their childrens' education, the schools became a magnet for other similar families with the better schools drawing the most of these families. Back in the early 80's, long before the housing bubble, the difference between a house in the best school districts with a similar one in a merely good or OK distrct was at least $50,000.

Fast forward to the late 90's. The DC area is still growing like mad, primarily as a result of the federal government and all of the industry, trade/lobbying groups, and commercial business associated with it. Building is big and it attracts a huge number of low-skilled immigrants, many illegal. These low-skilled, low-paid workers now occupy the apartments and townhouses that used to house mainly young childless singles and crowd multiple families into single family houses. Many of these workers have children in FC schools.

Lo and behold, the dynamic changes. The FC school sytem now has soaring ESL and special ed costs, both government mandated. Taxes go up, quality goes down. FC is fighting with NCLB to be allowed to test ESL students longer in their native language, IMHO, because lower scores will drag down their reputation as being among the best in the country, thus being able to attract businesses, etc.

Meanwhile, nextdoor Prince William County has instituted a major crack-down on illegal aliens and the housing bubble has burst, especially in the sub-prime mortgage sector. Lots of formerly crowded houses that had 3 or more families or groups of single men living in them are emptying out as are some apartments there. PWC has had a sizeable drop in ESL students.

Guess where many of them are going.

If you want to see the future of FC schools, look at CA's. CA used to be consistently first or second in the US in quality of public schools. Now it's a few great schools in a few protected areas and a lot of middling to awful schools.

The theory I've heard is that Ted Kennedy spearheaded the 1965 Act because the Kennedys resented the WASPy Boston Brahmins who would never accept these Irish Catholics as peers, no matter how much money they made. Thus, reduce WASP influence by making WASPs a minority. May be true, I don't know. What is true is that Kennedy promised that the '65 Act would not change America's "ehnic balance" although, for whatever reason, that is obviously what he intended to do.

I don't understand why they compiled data which was clearly going to give an unacceptable outcome.

Oh? And who would be willing to put his cushy government job on the line by pointing out this would be the result? Far safer to let it go ahead. Then it's incumbent on the researchers to make sure everthing comes out "correct".

What you're seeing is career suicide by the researchers who think their job is to report facts.

I recently went to a neighborhood civic association meeting in Fairfax County. The meeting room was packed with white people who were middle-aged and older. I don't remember seeing a single non-white person there. The children who attend the school in the neighborhood are mostly non-white. Giant McMansions are being built here that end up packed with immigrants. We are going to move out soon to get our child into a better school district.

Jim O'Sullivan - As much as I think Ted Kennedy is a dishonest SOB, I actually don't think he really knew what he was doing with the 1965 immigration law, and had not a clue what its true consequences would be. He couldn't have - the guy is just not that bright. He flunked out of Harvard (and got back in thanks to Joe Sr.) and went to a 2nd rate law school. If it were not for his family's money and connections, he would have been a cop on the street in Boston, or more likely given his size and affinity for bullying people, an "enforcer" for some organized crime racket.

You are not alone ibm I. See the FAIR web site below for "Domestic Migration" FROM FC 1990-99 and 2000-2006. People - I suspect younger better educated people w/children - are leaving in droves and being replaced by "immigrants".

On a VA blog that deals largely with policy wonk stuff like traffic, the blog master had a posting on the illegal alien problem in NoVA. Somebody sniffed to the effect that, well, why wasn't more DIVERSE Arlington having the problems and unrest that PWC was then having (before the crack-down)? I had no problem posing these charts and noting that the folks who didn't appreciate the DIVERSITY in Arlington had already LEFT. Looks as if the same is starting to happen in FC as well.......

Ya know, I'm no fan of teachers, but like the thoughtless anti-Smeitic remarks I wish the anti-teacherrhetoric would go away. Some, indeed, are idiots. A lot are working their butts off and genuinely deovted. They're decent people who we need on our side. Feel free to knock the unions, not the teachers.

Jewish support for the 1965 bill was directly related to FDR not letting Jews into the US who were fleeing the Holocaust. Having your extended family slaughtered by Hitler tends to change politics. File that one under obvious.

Maybe that's the justification, but it's a dumb one. There are lots of people in this world who are oppressed. We can't take them all in - it would be ludicrous.

And there are lots of people - non-Jews - who died in that war who would love to have escaped Country X (50 million, in fact) who did not get out. Why just the Jews? Why not those others? It might to a Jew seem sad, but to me it seems ethnocentric and, well, bigotted.

Bullshit. It was a clever strategy by Catholics to increase their numbers. The biggest supporter of open borders is the Catholic Church.

I'm not knokcing Catholics, since most have no clue what political views their leaders are pushing, but they clearly deserve part of the blame. Hispanics make up 70% of the Catholics in my state.

But the real problem is that all denominations of pushing, mostly behind their congregations' backs, for open borders. If you go to church take that into consideration when they pass the bucket or ask for your tithing check.

half_sigma: The anonymous anti-Semitism in these comments is getting tiresome. There are many Jewish conservatives, and the left-wing is full of leaders who are not Jewish.

testing99: Jewish support for the 1965 bill was directly related to FDR not letting Jews into the US who were fleeing the Holocaust.

Having your extended family slaughtered by Hitler tends to change politics. File that one under obvious.

Kneejerk anti-anti-semitism is even more tiresome. Jewish politics haven't changed. Jews overwhelmingly favored immigration in 1924, in 1965, and still do today. Likewise race-denial. There are several reasons why. There are also several reasons why some don't. Almost all of it revolves around what they think is good for jews.

What I find filed under obvious is that most people feel free to make negative generalizations about what WASPs or Catholics think is good for them, but consider jews exempt from criticism. The norm in our schools and media today is to demonize people who are obviously being harmed by multiculturalism for opposing it, while praising those who love multiculturalism for supporting it.

Celebrate diversity, bash Whitey. It's filed right next to obvious under recipes for genocide.

The anonymous anti-Semitism in these comments is getting tiresome. There are many Jewish conservatives, and the left-wing is full of leaders who are not Jewish.

This looks like something that would be amenable to Steve Sailer's method of looking for lists of prominent *whatever* and counting up the numbers of *ethnic group*. My hunch is that Jews would be grossly overrepresented among prominent liberals and anti-national neocons, and merely slightly overrepresented among nationalist/paleocon types (Jews tend to be smart so they're going to be overrepresented at anything that involves forming arguments with words. I wouldn't be surprised if they're overrepresnted among Holocaust deniers, for that matter).

Of course, hunches are pretty worthless compared to data, but I've gotta do yard work now...

On a different note, it's about time somebody skewered the self-proclaim "Reality-Based Community." They're only realistic compared to Bush, which is kind of like only being tall compared to Mini-Me.

I remember there being some nice neighborhoods in North Arlington where the schools are still pretty good. Similarly, there are good schools in the city of Falls Church, but this is like an island in an increasingly dicey area. They remain relatively insulated by higher home prices. For middle class families, a homeowners association might be the key to making sure you don't move into a neighborhood that is about to be dragged under.

eric:"Oh? And who would be willing to put his cushy government job on the line by pointing out this would be the result? Far safer to let it go ahead. Then it's incumbent on the researchers to make sure everthing comes out "correct".

What you're seeing is career suicide by the researchers who think their job is to report facts."

"Bullshit. It was a clever strategy by Catholics to increase their numbers. The biggest supporter of open borders is the Catholic Church."

Maybe now, but Kevin McDonald reports that Italians and Irish had little problem with the 1924 national origins law when it came into effect, whereas Jews strongly opposed it. Before the holocaust, note, but after pogroms.

I think a good case can be made that immigration is "good for the jews", good for the immigrants, but bad for the average citizen.

Trouble for the average citizen is that Jews are very active politically, both as volunteers, financial contributors, and candidates. Hence they tend to get their way.

People change and Jewish people are becoming more conservative. Sorry, I can't cite, but saw it in a discussion on the election and Republicans believing they can get a higher percentage of their vote... and it was irrespective of nervousness over Barack Obama. The trend is there for elite New England Irish Catholics as well. Just like everyone else, they interact with their world, see things, and change accordingly. Anecdotal story: I was talking with a Boston Irish liberal (teacher w/ a masters' degree) who turned out to be not quite that liberal. In the first five minutes of meeting her I learned that she was a "liberal" because of anti-Irish bigotry against her ancestors . She would go on to fight for civil rights in the '60's and even went to teach in Atlanta's inner city. Disillusioned and hoping her experience was a fluke, she went to St. Petersburg, Florida. She saw the same thing and began to believe we are different. She retired early with a broken heart. Now she's accepted that "class" is what differentiates us, which is technically true, but while she is uncomfortable exploring it further, and probably too old and set, her world view was dramatically changed. She even applauded my homeschooling my children which she said she had a problem with "years ago". BTW, I'm neither Jewish nor Boston Irish, but mostly Southern Irish and our and our ancestors' experiences are vastly different from our more numerous Northern brethren.

"Bullshit. It was a clever strategy by Catholics to increase their numbers. The biggest supporter of open borders is the Catholic Church."Well, it wasn't a strategy of "the Catholics" per se, since they're not a hive mind or sinister conspiracy, but it is my understanding the heaviest cheerleading of the 1965 Immigration Act was led by politicians in the Northeast who represented heavily Irish and Italian districts.

No, explode. Think vote for Jared Taylor, if not that, David Duke, if not that...well you get the point.

Some analysis of Hitler's rise was a concern for the decadence of German culture (read liberals).

Long story short. Liberals are overgrown children who circumvent laws. Seeing that they can circumvent and dont play fair, they cant be stopped. So people vote extreme right as the only way to control the situation.

Once extremists come into power - well they were voted in with dictatorial powers or acquiescence to dictatorial powers - so they screw things royally.

Jewish political history has not been very stable You can be very smart but not know how to work together on a large scale. The ability to organize is what made Europe great and why the Jews had such a problem maintaining their independence.

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He flunked out of Harvard (and got back in thanks to Joe Sr.) and went to a 2nd rate law school.

According to Wikipedia, he went to UVA, which is one of the best law schools in the country - it's usually rated higher than Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, and Northwestern, and it's produced at least one SCOTUS justice that I can think of offhand.

It's true that UVA is less elite than Harvard or Yale, but it's usually considered a peer of Penn, Berkeley, and Michigan.

Anonymous: "Hitler has been dead for 63 years could Jews let up on the open borders now...please."

Jews can be reached out to and converted to being conservative. But conservatives don't seem to understand that Jews fear evangelical Christianity. (What are they afraid of? They are afraid of their children being converted to Christianity.) Thus Jews are attracted to the Democratic party because it's the anti-Christian party.

On all other issues Jews could become staunch conservatives, but this will be tough if the conservative party is so deeply in bed with evangelical Christians.

Jews wag the dog way more often than not. If they did become conservatives, it would be by rewriting the definition of conservatism to include all the things Jews want (open borders, propositional nationhood, multiculti, etc.).

They'd probably even come up with a new name...I dunno, like neoconservatism or something.

I don't think it takes much thought to understand some knee-jerk positive reaction to immigration among people who:

a. Often have aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great grandparents who immigrated to the US

b. Often have other relatives who didn't immigrate, and thus got murdered by the Nazis.

Now, that doesn't mean it's a sensible policy for the US in 2008. But it's not a surprise, anymore than it's a surprise when you see someone whose parents came over from Mexico favoring easy immigration.

Maybe it will be like those waves of immigrants, and maybe it won't. The issue is, allowing massive immigration is a policy with huge potential effects on our country. And essentially nobody on the national political or media stage much wants to discuss whether it's a good idea.

Maybe it's a great idea--importing huge numbers of Irish, Italians, Jews, and Chinese worked out pretty well for us, despite a lot of problems with the first generation or two of immigrants. Maybe this will all work out, too. But, to quote Fred Reed, nobody will ever be able to accuse us of thinking through the decision to allow this massive flow of immigrants.

"On all other issues Jews could become staunch conservatives, but this will be tough if the conservative party is so deeply in bed with evangelical Christians."

Where do you live? Wyoming? Do you know any Jews? Most American Jews are staunch liberals who whole-heartedly embrace every aspect of liberalism often to a comical degree. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Maybe it's a great idea--importing huge numbers of Irish, Italians, Jews, and Chinese worked out pretty well for us

1) And if it wasn't, would anyone ever be allowed to say it? That's the problem: if our newest wave of immigration doesn't work out we'll never be able to acknowledge it - in 2070 we'll have to say that our country, ranked #107 in per capita income, wouldn't be so great if it weren't for all those vibrant Latin immigrants.

2) One big problem with the descendants of those late 19th C. immigrants is that today they are amongst the biggest supporters of open borders. (Otherwise I'm mostly quite fond of them.)

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